More and more e-mails are now exchanged through the Internet network. Often, a received e-mail includes a document attached thereto. The recipient which receives such an e-mail removes the document from the e-mail to save mail repository space. Therefore, a problem which is raised today is the traceability of the documents which have been detached from the e-mails.
US patent application publication 2001/0054073 A1 describes a method and system for handling e-mails comprising several intermediate receivers. Any attachment in an e-mail is detached in the intermediate receiver and stored. Furthermore, the attachment is replaced with a reference to the stored attachment before the e-mail is forwarded to the recipient.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,275,848 describes a method and apparatus for the automated referencing of electronic information wherein rules including some criteria are applied for the detachment of the documents attached to an e-mail. When a document is detached, it is placed on a remote site and a pointer is inserted in the message, such a pointer being linked to the remote site.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,781,901 describes a system wherein an attachment to a e-mail sent by a sender to a recipient of a network is stored in a storage means visible to the network and relatively local to the sender. The sender requests an e-mail option from the recipient, which provides a configurable e-mail page to the sender in response to the request. An attachment reference comprising the network address of the attachment is supplied to the configurable e-mail page.
In all these prior patents, a pointer or a reference is used to maintain a permanent link between the pointer or reference and the detached document. However, none of these patents describes a system for keeping this link if the document is moved or renamed.